1. IR SPECTRA SHOW DIOXIN-INDUCED CHANGES IN LIVING CELLS
by Annette Greiner
(Contact: HYHolman@lbl.gov)

A research team from Berkeley Lab has demonstrated that infrared spectromicroscopy with synchrotron light can be useful for examining dioxin-induced changes in individual living cells. Their work provides new clues about what happens to human cells exposed to dioxins. They used the Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) microscope at Beamline 1.4.3 to study the effects of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) on liver cells. The dioxin they studied is one of the most potent of an important class of toxins, the polychlorinated aromatic hydrocarbons. Such toxins can cause cancer, birth defects, and altered hormone levels, among other things.

Read the full story at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/dioxin.html.

Publication about this research: H.-Y.N. Holman, R. Goth-Goldstein, M.C. Martin, M.L. Russell, W. R. McKinney, "Low-dose responses to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin in single living human cells measured by synchrotron infrared spectromicroscopy," Environ. Sci. Technol. 34, 2513 (2000).

2. ICESS8 WRAP-UP
by Art Robinson
(Contacts: csfadley@lbl.gov, terminello1@llnl.gov)

Gathering from 33 countries around the world, 408 participants descended on the Clark Kerr Campus of the University of California, Berkeley, on August 8-12 for the Eighth International Conference on Electronic Spectroscopy and Structure (ICESS8). The initially overcast skies and accompanying chilly weather invited recollections of Mark Twain's infamous comment, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." Nevertheless, the skies cleared in time for a splendid outdoor evening banquet worthy of the extensive collection of more than 100 oral and 330 poster presentations assembled under the leadership of the conference co-chairs, Charles Fadley (Univ. of California, Davis, and Berkeley Lab) and Louis Terminello (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory).

The enlarged scope of this year's reinvigorated conference program included spectroscopies such as x-ray fluorescence and near-edge x-ray absorption that complement the various electron spectroscopies that were the exclusive subjects of the first conference in 1971, when it was called the International Conference on Electron Spectroscopy. The conference now provides a broad forum for discussing experimental and theoretical aspects of electron and x-ray spectroscopies of all stripes; various forms of spectromicroscopy and microspectroscopy; related phenomena dealing with electronic structure and dynamics; and their applications to surface, interface, materials, and industrial analysis. The complete final program and participant list are available in downloadable (PDF) format at http://www-als.lbl.gov/icess. (Photographs taken at the conference will also be posted at the Web site until September 10.) The conference proceedings, including both invited and contributed papers, will be published as a special issue of the Journal of Electron Spectroscopy and Related Phenomena, with Adam Hitchcock (McMaster Univ.) and Tong Leung (Univ. of Waterloo) as co-editors.

Winners of the student poster contest (selection committee chaired by Harald Ade, North Carolina State Univ.) were announced at the banquet. They were Niko Pontius (Forschungszentrum Juelich) and Giorgio Turri (INFM TASC, Trieste, and Politecnico di Milano). At the end of the meeting, it was announced that ICESS9 would be held at Uppsala University in 2003 in time to celebrate the 85th birthday of Kai Siegbahn, one of the fathers of modern electron spectroscopy.

3. USER PUBLICATIONS NEEDED BY SEPTEMBER 22
(Contact: alsuser@lbl.gov)

Each year, the ALS must report on the number of publications resulting from ALS work to its funding agencies in the U.S. Department of Energy. If you have recently published any ALS-related work in a scientific journal, conference proceedings, or Ph.D. thesis, please let us know by going to the User Services Online Forms Web page at http://alsusweb.lbl.gov. The "Publications Search & Submit" link will allow you to search the existing database (if you want to check which of your publications are already there) as well as submit new publication information. Please DO NOT submit unpublished talks; abstracts; or journal articles that are still "submitted," "accepted," or "in press." The deadline for this fiscal year is September 22, 2000. Your timely response will be greatly appreciated, as it is imperative that we accurately report the number of ALS-related publications, an important measure of the good science being done at this facility.

4. MACROMOLECULAR CRYSTALLOGRAPHY PROPOSALS DUE NOVEMBER 1
(Contact: alsproposals@lbl.gov)

The User Services Office is accepting proposals from scientists who wish to conduct research as independent investigators at the Macromolecular Crystallography Facility (Beamline 5.0.2) between April and December 2001. The deadline for submissions is November 1, 2000. Scientists wishing to renew a previous proposal must notify the ALS User Services Office Manager, Bernie Dixon, at alsproposals@lbl.gov. The following resources are available for further information:

ALS User Services Administrator

alsuser@lbl.gov

Independent-investigator process and PDF proposal form

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/independinvest.html

Beamline 5.0.2 information

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/5.0-Datasheet.pdf

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/bl_table.html

Macromolecular Crystallography Facility Web site

http://www.lbl.gov/LBL-Programs/mcf

5. UEC CORNER: NOTES FROM THE USERS' EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
by Nora Berrah
(Contact: berrah@wmich.edu)

The UEC is busy preparing for the Users' Meeting, which will be held at the ALS on October 16-18, 2000. This meeting will feature overviews and highlights of work carried out at the ALS and elsewhere as well as specialized workshops. Please check our conference Web site at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg for details. This year, attendees will be able to register on line. Further information and a link to the on-line registration form are now available at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/registration.html. Also, the deadline for the submission of abstracts has been extended to September 10. This will be the final deadline, so please send in your abstract now!

We need your input in nominating candidates for the David A. Shirley Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement at the ALS, the Halbach Award for Outstanding Instrumentation at the ALS, and the Tim Renner User Services Award. Send your nominations for the Halbach Award to Gary Krebs (GFKrebs@lbl.gov) and your nominations for the Shirley and Renner Awards to Nora Berrah (berrah@wmich.edu). Please provide justification and supporting information for your nominations. Winners will be announced at the Users' Meeting.

We also need your input in selecting four new UEC members, one of them being a student or postdoc. The exiting members are Stephen Kevan, Charles Fadley, James Underwood, and David Hansen (student). Send your nominations to Nora Berrah.

6. LET THE SLIDE SHOW BEGIN!
(Contact: ACThompson@lbl.gov)

A highlight of the ALS Users' Meeting banquet last year was a slide show of ALS users and staff. The slides were made into a "Faces of the ALS" poster that is currently posted just inside the ALS entrance. This year, Al Thompson is organizing a similar show, to be shown during or after the Users' Meeting banquet. If you have any interesting or amusing photos that you would like to see in the slide show, please contact him at ACThompson@lbl.gov. Electronic files in GIF or TIFF format are preferred; hardcopy prints can also be submitted.

7. WHO'S IN TOWN

Following are some of the experimenters who will be collecting data during the next two weeks at the ALS.

Beamline 1.4.2
Kelly Knutsen and Richard Saykally (Univ. of California, Berkeley)

Beamline 1.4.3
T.J. Wilkinson and Dale Perry (Berkeley Lab)
Phil Huie (Stanford Univ. Medical Center)
Sherry Zhang and Phil Ross (Berkeley Lab)
Ted Raab (Univ. of Colorado at Boulder)
Hoi-Ying Holman (Berkeley Lab)

Beamline 5.0.2
Ray Stevens (The Scripps Research Institute)
Katherine Ely (The Burnham Institute)
Keith Wilson (Vertex)
Ian Wilson (The Scripps Research Institute)
K. Christopher Garcia (Stanford Univ. School of Medicine)
Earl Rutenber (Howard Hughes Medical Institute)
Christopher Hill (Univ. of Utah)
Partho Ghosh (Univ. of California, San Diego)
Will Somers (Genetics Institute)

Beamline 7.0.1
Jim Allen and coworkers (Univ. of Michigan)
Harald Ade (North Carolina State Univ.)

Beamline 7.3.1.1
David Abraham (IBM T.J. Watson Research Center)

Beamline 9.0.2
Lusi Sheng (Univ. of Science and Technology of China)
Paul M. Guyon (Univ. Paris-Sud)
Hochlauf Majdi (Univ. of Marne-la-Vallee, France)

Beamline 9.3.2
Philip Ross (Berkeley Lab)

8. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: Lampo@lbl.gov)

For the user runs of August 22 - 27 and August 29 - September 3, the beam availability was 98%. Of the delivered beam, 92% was delivered to completion without interruption. There were no significant outages.

Long-term and weekly operations schedules are available on the Web (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/accelinfo.html). Requests for special operations use of the "scrubbing" shift should be sent to Bruce Samuelson (BCSamuelson@lbl.gov, x4738) by 1:00 p.m. Friday. The Accelerator Status Hotline at (510) 486-6766 (ext. 6766 from Lab phones) features a recorded message giving up-to-date information on the operational status of the accelerator.